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Taroko Japanese Shabu Shabu a dish with swish

In Lost in Translation , Bill Murray's character asks of the cuisine at a trendy Tokyo eatery, &quot;What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?&quot;

At Taroko Japanese Shabu-Shabu, diners are presented with a choice of thinly sliced meats, a hearty plate of vegetables and a smattering of other selections to cook in a choice of six broths. (ANDREW WALLACE / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

Noise factor: A selection of Asian pop hits is drowned in customer chatter.

Parking: Lot in front of the strip mall is usually packed, but there's also free underground parking.

Wheelchair access: Yes.

In Lost in Translation, Bill Murray's character asks of the cuisine at a trendy Tokyo eatery, "What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?"

Actually, Bill, the dish is called shabu-shabu and it's so scrumptious it deserves to be named twice.

In the tradition of do-it-yourself Asian cookeries – from Chinese hot pot to Korean barbecue – personal burners for each diner are set into the tables at Taroko Japanese Shabu-Shabu. The fragrant vapour from pots of steaming broth clouds the windows, giving the restaurant a saunalike aura from the outside and obscuring the view of the interactive dining experience awaiting customers inside.

Shabu-shabu, roughly translated as "swish swish," is a Japanese take on hot pot. Diners are presented with a choice of thinly sliced meats accompanied by a hearty plate of vegetables and a smattering of other selections to swish in a choice of six broths (alternatives can be substituted for $1.99).

Do-it-yourself gourmets can express their culinary creativity in three easy steps: toss any array of items into the broth – playing with colour, texture and taste – allow the items to stew and then pick out different combinations to mix with sauce and rice or noodles. In the process, they create a delicious soup to drink up at the end of the meal.

ON THE PLATE: Seven sensibly priced shabu-shabu combos include broth, a vegetable plate, a meat plate, a selection of appetizers, salad, a choice of rice or udon noodles and fruit for dessert.

The House Special Mixed Shabu-Shabu ($16.50) is the priciest but most substantial. It includes seafood (shrimp, fish, mussels, crab) and a choice of beef, pork, lamb or chicken.

Each of the meat choices can be ordered separately. A seafood shabu-shabu is $13.50; a beef or lamb shabu-shabu is $12.50; and a chicken or pork shabu-shabu is $11.50.

The thinly sliced meat cooks almost instantly with a few swishes in the pork-based broth, which is weakly flavoured to start but is quickly infused with such additions as bok choy, enoki and shiitake mushrooms, carrots, Chinese cabbage, taro, melon, tofu, fish and beef balls, a quail egg, artificial crab and an inexplicably blue-and-pink striped fish cake. Diners can also add hot sauce and barbecue sauce to enhance the broth – and the meat that cooks in it.

TAKE A PASS: The menu offers a selection of standard Asian rice and noodle dishes but virtually everyone in the restaurant orders the restaurant's namesake soups. Chinese-style hot pots ($12.50) come with a broth that lacks spice and flavour and there's not much on the side to inject taste. The chicken in sesame oil hot pot contains large chunks of ginger and pieces of bone-in chicken leg and is served with a garlic sauce and a shot of sake. Despite these additions, it doesn't compare to shabu-shabu.

ON THE SIDE: The combos come with either udon noodles or rice. Rice is better; noodles are served cold. A selection of Korean appetizers, including pickled radish, kimchi and seaweed, is a light starter, while refreshing orange slices finish the mostly liquid feast.

AT YOUR SERVICE: Appetizers come blink-of-an-eye quickly and the soup soon follows. But the servers tend to turn your burner up to full blast, making the broth boil away too quickly, leaving the ingredients exposed and your mouth burning. The staff are supposed to refill your pot from a pitcher of broth but sometimes fail to do so promptly. An order of strawberry juice was forgotten and the hot pot, a "special order," took about 10 times longer than the signature shabu-shabu.

PRICE RANGE: Main dishes $5.50 to $16.50.

BOTTOM LINE: It's a shame that Taroko is one of the few shabu-shabu restaurants in the GTA. It is a unique, filling and entertaining dining experience that should be shared beyond those who can find this low-key, tucked-away eatery in the middle of a Thornhill plaza laden with Asian cuisine.

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